Construct 3 on mobile

11
Official Construct Post
Ashley's avatar
Ashley
  • 3 Feb, 2017
  • 790 words
  • ~3-5 mins
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There's just one more thing to announce this week, before we plough in to all the new features.

Mobile and tablet devices are taking over the world. They've been outselling PCs for a while now. Many of us have a tablet device in addition to a desktop or laptop system, and others would be lost without their smartphone. Modern mobile devices have hardware specs rivalling laptop systems with traditional desktop OSs. Wouldn't it be amazing if you could use Construct 3 on the go with these powerful new devices?

Luckily, Construct 3 also runs on Android. It's the same web app with the same web address, but we've adapted the UI to work on mobile displays with a simple swiping system to access features. It supports multi-touch in the editor, including the Layout View. Construct 3 has been specially architected to minimise its memory use, so even large, ambitious projects can open on a phone. It's been carefully designed to help preserve battery life by intelligently scheduling work so the CPU can spend longer in low-power states. Modern GPU-accelerated browser technology allows it to run smoothly as you navigate around. It can also run in fullscreen right from Chrome, and you can add its icon to your home screen where it will also work offline, just like a native app. In fact, soon Chrome will even generate an APK file for Construct 3 when you add it to your home screen, so you can use it just like any other native app.

A system with a mouse and keyboard is still likely to be the most productive. However some Android devices now ship with keyboards — and did you know you can even attach a mouse to Android devices? This opens up a whole new class of devices for developing with. It's also a great way to review, adjust and demo projects while out-and-about, even when just using touch.

Let's take a look at it in action! With kind permission of Daniel West, here's a photo showing Construct 3 running in Chrome on a Nexus 9 featuring Airscape.

Construct 3 with Airscape on a Nexus 9. Click to expand.

We've also made lots of adaptations for mobile devices. For example on smartphone screens, the Event Sheet View collapses down to a new style vertical view. Here's a photo of the Space Blaster event sheet on a HTC 10:

Construct 3 on a HTC 10

Our vision is that you can use Construct 3 wherever you are, with whichever device you happen to have to hand. We're excited to see what new workflows this makes possible. We're not sure this has really been done before. So we can't wait to see what you can do with it!

Show me more!

Here's a batch of extra screenshots showing how various aspects of the UI have been adapted for both tablet and mobile sizes.

Editing a layout from Airscape on a Nexus 9.

The event sheet view can use the familiar view if the tablet display is large enough.

On small displays menus like the main menu become full-screen for touch-friendly use.

On mobile the Project Bar (and others) swipe in from the right...

...and the Properties Bar swipes in from the left.

What about iOS and other browsers?

We've had a few questions about supporting other browsers, and I'm sure you're wondering if this works on iOS. Construct 3 is built with genuinely revolutionary technology, using bleeding-edge web standards — just like Construct 2's HTML5 games were when we launched them in 2011, which originally only worked in Chrome and Firefox. This means the initial release will only be available in Chrome, which covers Windows, Mac, Linux, Chrome OS and Android. Sadly this means we cannot initially support iOS, because Apple's restrictive rules prevent other browser engines — Chrome on iOS is essentially just a skin around Safari's browsing engine.

We absolutely 100% want to bring Construct 3 to all browsers, but we didn't want to keep you waiting. We are optimistic we can bring Construct 3 to those of you using Firefox, Edge, and Safari, including on iOS. Our experience with the HTML5 games in Construct 2 shows this is just a matter of time. For example Firefox needs just two features to be able to run Construct 3.

What about publishing to mobile?

We've also had a lot of questions about this. We're making some significant changes to how publishing to mobile works in Construct 3 — check back next week for more news!

Catch-up

Missed our earlier announcements? Here's a list of all the news about Construct 3 so far:

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